When you play like that, with the biggest heart in Brooklyn, you do not deserve to lose a heartbreaker on a night you justifiably cried foul because the officials somehow did not.
Deron Williams spent this night pretending all was right with his inflamed ankles and right wrist, spent the night looking like Deron Williams again, and now, Nets 72, Grizzlies 72, he tried to win the game.
Williams had already scored 24 points over the first 47 minutes and 30 seconds when he saw an opening through the lane and drove fearlessly through the traffic.
If Tony Allen, who was credited with the block, didn’t foul him, Zack Randolph sure did.
“I thought he took the ball to the basket really hard and got knocked down,” P.J. Carlesimo said. “It was 60 feet away from me. I didn’t see it.”
There were three blind referees who were a lot closer than 60 feet away who didn’t see it either.
Williams crumpled to the court under the basket, holding his brand new left-calf contusion, courtesy of a knee, soon to be a 76-72 loser.
“I definitely thought I got fouled … but they didn’t call it, so I guess I didn’t,” Williams said.
When he got back up, he saw MarShon Brooks swat away an Allen flip in the lane, and when the replay review determined there was no goaltending, Allen, fouled with 19.5 seconds left by Mirza Teletovic, sank a pair of free throws.
And it was here that Williams made an ill-fated bounce pass that sealed the Nets’ fate.
“It was a little broken-down play, really,” he said. “I had to come out and get a little farther than I thought and just turned the corner and went down the lane, I saw Mirza cutting, but I think he was going to the corner, and it was just a bad pass, one I wish I could have back.”
Williams had brought Brooklyn to its feet in the fourth quarter with a determined drive and a pair of 3s from the right side gave the Nets a 67-63 lead. With fearless closer Joe Johnson sidelined again with a sore heel, Carlesimo asked Brooks (4-for-13 shooting) to remove the bench splinters he had been accumulating and Teletovic (five points in the last three minutes) for some juice.
But down the stretch, it had to be Williams’ basketball, and Williams’ game.
“I tried to be more aggressive today,” Williams said. He thought back to “The Foul That Never Was’’ and said: “I didn’t settle for a jumper to close the game right there, I tried to get to the lane, attack. … I thought I got fouled but … didn’t get a call.”
It is more about D-Will than the skill these days for him.
“I make a move, and my ankle hurts for 10 minutes,” he had said in the morning. “I do a spin move, and after I do the spin move, it hurts so bad that I can’t jump to make the layup. It’s frustrating but … what can you do?”
The prideful ones always hurt the most.
“When you got someone like Deron, who’s used to dominating or controlling almost every one of those matchups, when you have injuries that limit you a little bit, even if the other guy is not necessarily getting the best of you, but it’s a guy that you’re used to dominating, that frustrates you,” Carlesimo said. “He’s still way better than most people you could put out there, but in his mind, ‘Maybe I can’t do as much as I know I’m capable of doing,’ so that’s got to upset you.”
Williams limped noticeably out of the locker room and into the unforgiving night, a black bag slung over his right shoulder. Carlesimo may be forced to sit him once more following back-to-backs.
“I’m sure it bothers him that he can’t be a hundred percent Deron Williams,” Carlesimo said. “He’s whatever that percent is right now, but if you think too much about the five or four or 10 or whatever the percent is that I’m not able to do, that probably takes you down another couple per cent. Just do what you’re capable of doing, that’s more than good enough for us.”
It should have been good enough for the Nets last night.
Foul odor inside Barclays Center.